The use of optical switching in an optical system is known. The optical switching is used to route an optical signal transmitted by a node to a desired receiving node. When fault tolerance in the system is desired, it is known to duplicate the entire system, with an optical signal being transmitted on different channels, with one optical switch receiving the optical signal on one channel and a second optical switch receiving the optical signal on a second channel.
Existing optical switching solutions typically are either fast, for example in the case of semiconductor optical amplifiers or SOAs, or low power, for example in the case of micro electro-mechanical systems or MEMS, but not both fast and low power.